6 Important Things You Should Know About Failing

Kim B. Stoneking, CAE provides corporate, executive and individual coaching as part of Catalist Consulting. Kim partners with clients by helping them to accelerate profitability by realizing greater potential, personally and professionally.

We’re sure you know that Babe Ruth held the career home run record for decades, but did you know that he also held the record for the most strike outs? He was known to say, “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” Wise words from a fearless man.

How often do you let fear of “striking out” get in your way? Whether you’re picking up the phone to call a brand new prospect or putting the finishing touches on your next proposal, how does fear affect you? Here are 5 good things about failing:

1. If you’re failing, at least you’re working. You should be using failure as a measure toward success. Here’s an example to show how it works: If your goal is to gain 5 clients by making 50 individual sales presentations, you should learn to like a “no.” It only means that very next meeting could be your “yes.” What do you do when you get a “no?”

2. If you’re failing, you should be learning. View every failure as a learning opportunity. We’ll bet you dollars to donuts that when most successful consultants and coaches were first starting out, they were evaluating every call that resulted in a “no.” They were thinking about what was said in the previous call that could help them do better in the next one. How are you learning from your failures?

3. If you’re failing, there’s help for the asking. There’s always room for improvement in whatever you do. Failing to achieve a goal is a great time to reach out to a friend, mentor, colleague, or coach to share that failure, ask some questions, express those fears, seek out best practices. When is the last time you reached out for help when you failed?

4. Failure can make you look good. Yes, we said it, and let’s say it again … Failure can make you look good! How? Because it makes you look human. Others respond to humanity. People want to help. If they see or sense your struggles or fears, they’ll do the best they can to alleviate them for you … if you reciprocate and do the same for others. When is the last time you spied a fear and took action to help someone through it?

5. You are not alone. We all fail … some more spectacularly than others. You could even venture to say that our culture is absolutely fascinated by failure. Take a quick look through reality TV and you’ll see what we mean. While you might not want to show up on YouTube, you can take solace from the fact that we are all inherently human and humans are born to make mistakes. You’re in good company!

6. Failure creates winners. There are countless stories of people who have overcome adversity to rise above and win against all odds. What makes their stories so compelling is their persistence and perseverance … their ability to let nothing get in their way when they have a goal in sight. Yoda had it pegged: “Do or do not. There is no try.”